As a child of the seventies, I can’t help but love a bit of retro… and Baked Alaska is definitely one retro classic that deserves a more central place in the modern repertoire.

Of course, Baked Alaska (also known as glace au four and Norwegian omelette) wasn’t invented in the 1970s! Wiki tells me the Baked Alaska epithet was bestowed back in 1876 but the basic recipe – ice cream, usually on a sponge cake base, coated in a thick layer of meringue and briefly baked in a hot oven – has been around for a lot longer than that. There are many claims about its origin but one that appeals to me is the mental image of American physicist Benjamin Thompson aka Count Rumford accidentally creating it during an experiment to test the heat resistance of beaten egg whites back in 1804!

My mental association between dish and decade no doubt arises from its popularity in British homes and restaurants in the decade of my birth.

Another part of the appeal may be the apparent craziness of the idea of baking a dish in which a main component is ice cream and it not resulting in a puddle of warm custard. But meringue is a superb insulator and the ice cream doesn’t melt in the brief period of baking needed to cook the outer layer of meringue.

Happy Blog Birthday! Christ, baked alaska! I am a little concerned my awful freezer which never freezes anything beyond (very) soft scoop may not be up to this challenge but I shall give it a go *fingers crossed*

Happy 4th blogiversary – isn’t it amazing how the years roll by. I’m a child of the 70s, but I don’t think I’ve ever eaten baked Alaska. I know it’s meant to work, but it sounds quite scary to make. Hmm, do I dare?

When the origin of a classic dish is in dispute I’m with you, Kavey: Go with the story you like best. But in case the Baked Alaska its origins are now well documented. The celebrated chef Charles Ranhofer of New York’s Delmonico’s served his version of a French dessert, glace au four, to celebrate the USA’s purchase of Alaska. At first he called it Alaska-Florida Cake but it was only after he changed it to Baked Alaska, as Arthur Schwartz writes in New York City Food, “flew out of the kitchen”.